Call for tougher times for white-collar crimes

The head of the corporate regulator wants judges to impose tougher sentences on white-collar criminals following convicted insider trader John Hartman having his jail sentence slashed by more than half.

“Having lived in America for a decade, I think what scares the hell out of most people is going to jail," the chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission,
Greg Medcraft,
told The Australian Financial Review.

“In America, it is the thing that white-collar criminals fear the most and the sentences are incredibly severe. That obviously has a big deterrence effect.

“My personal view is that you have to send a deterrent effect that, when people weigh up whether to break the law or not, they are very much aware that the consequences could be extreme.

“Often what we look to do when we take a deterrent action is to send a signal to the rest of the community that the behaviour will not be tolerated and people should not even think about it."

The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal late last year unanimously reduced Hartman’s 4 ½-year prison sentence to three years, with 15 months behind bars. The 26-year-old is expected to be released on March 1.

The calls for tougher sentences echo recently retired Federal Court judge Ray Finkelstein, who last year warned that the system “treats white-collar criminals leniently compared with what people regard as real crime".

Last year, three senior judges in the Victorian Court of Appeal criticised the penalties for music promoter
Glenn Wheatley
and his lawyer, Paul Gregory.

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The court said Mr Wheatley’s 2½-year term for tax evasion was “inappropriately low" and Mr Gregory’s one-year sentence was “manifestly inadequate". Mr Gregory’s sentence should have been up to five or six times greater, the court said.

Home detention orders have become increasingly common particularly in NSW. TV producers Michael Boughen and Wayne Cameron avoided jail last year after evading $1.75 million in tax over seven years using a Vanuatu tax scheme. Former Computershare employee Justin O’Brien also received a two-year intensive correction order last year after pleading guilty to four charges of insider trading.